Praise for Nicolette:
"Nicolette is ostensibly the story of the narrator's obsession with a woman, but under the surface it is an insightful examination of the creative process. The book's chapters appear in an unpredictable order: the narrative begins in media res with Chapter 27, Chapter 1 occurs halfway in, and Chapter 17 is repeated each time the couple makes love. In a passage that shows Zend to be a supremely self-conscious writer, the reason for this unconventional arrangement is explained in Chapter 0:
Why begin with 27? I don't know. Intuitively. More or less it would have been the 27th had I come chronologically... The 29th came shortly after the 27th but I left something out...and what I am writing now is the introduction, which is why it is 0. If I followed the objective sequence of events I would falsify the chronology of my subjective creation. This way is closer to the truth.
Dan Bortolotti, "Indie Press," Shift magazine (Toronto, Spring 1994), p. 41
